Cantrell continues push for control of local taxes to pay for infrastructure needs

Posted Dec 7, 2018

Left to right: Panel moderator and New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, Harris County Judge Edward M. Emmett and New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell speak during the "Cities for Tomorrow" conference on Friday, December 7, 2018. (Photo by Mike Cohen, The New York Times)

The top elected officials from New Orleans and Harris County, Texas, both municipal areas hit hard by storms in recent years, have called for local governments to have more control over local revenues that normally go to state coffers, in order to pay for infrastructure projects that would reduce flooding.

The comments from New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and Judge Edward Emmett, who has oversight of Harris County government, came during a panel discussion on city resilience hosted Friday (Dec. 7) at the Contemporary Arts Center by The New York Times. Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, also participated in the panel talk to discuss her city’s recovery in the face of a halting federal response to the devastation brought by two hurricanes last year.

Cantrell, who assumed New Orleans’ top office in May, has faced pushback from state officials and hospitality industry leaders for her plan to rededicate a portion of revenues from state sales taxes levied on hotels to go instead toward infrastructure improvements to the city’s aged drainage system. The mayor has not divulged details of her plan, but has in recent days advocated strongly to retain hotel-tax revenues that are largely dedicated to tourism entities such as the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and venues including the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

On Thursday, executives for New Orleans & Co., the city’s convention and visitors bureau, presented a proposal to drum up $81 million in one-time money for infrastructure initiatives and the creation of a stormwater master plan. Stephen Perry, New Orleans & Co.’s chief executive officer, at a news conference Thursday described Cantrell’s rededication plan as wishful thinking. The mayor quickly issued a statement in response, calling New Orleans & Co.’s proposal a good first step but “not adequate to the scale of our needs,” which she has estimated to be between $80 million and $100 million for infrastructure improvements.

Speaking at Friday’s New York Times panel, Cantrell doubled-down on her call for New Orleans to take in more of the revenues from taxes on local hotels than the state currently doles out. She framed future infrastructure projects paid for with more local revenues as a way to entice additional support from the federal government, which to date has earmarked New Orleans for around $2 billion in assistance via the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The latest round of federally funded road and underground utility projects, priced at about $1.2 billion, has only just begun to break ground more than 13 years after the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina led to catastrophic flooding in 2005.

“We have to change locally and at the state level based on revenue here to even make the case at the federal level,” Cantrell said. “You’ve got to put some skin in the game.”

The mayor’s stance was echoed by Emmett, the top elected official in Harris County which covers the Houston area. His jurisdiction was battered by historic flooding rains Hurricane Harvey brought last summer. Emmett critiqued the state government in Austin for not releasing recovery dollars to the Houston area from the state’s $12 billion reserve fund, and stressed that local infrastructure projects are dependent on revenues from property taxes that the state sets. He anticipates bills coming from the Texas Legislature next year that would seek to reduce local property taxes even further.

“We need to let local officials make the decisions of how to get that money out and where to best use it,” Emmett said. “That’s the bottom line.”

For her part, Cruz argued that the slow pace of federal funding forced Puerto Rican residents affected by hurricanes Irma and Maria last year to assume the role of first responder. The San Juan mayor said people living in her city have had to learn “on the fly” how to navigate the federal process to secure recovery funding, while at the same time pushing to ensure affordable homes destroyed by the hurricane are not replaced by higher-priced ones.

Cruz, who has previously sparred with President Donald Trump over the federal government’s hurricane response, opined that the destruction in her city has “lifted the veil” off the threat posed of an increasing number of natural disasters posed by climate change. Those disasters also tend to hit the poorest segments of a given population hardest, Cruz said, and expose the economic disparities facing people who live in places advertised as attractive tourist destinations.

Trump, meanwhile, has cast doubt of the legitimacy behind climate-change science, and has said he disagrees with findings from a dire report issued last month on the future economic and infrastructure impacts of climate change.

Climate change “isn’t fake news,” Cruz said during Friday’s panel, referencing a term the president uses often to lambast media reports. “It’s about people losing their lives.”

The panel on city resilience kicked off the second day of the Cities for Tomorrow conference in downtown New Orleans. The event, which continues through Saturday, is hosted by the New York Times along with NOLA Media Group, publisher of NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune.